What You Think Uni Will Be Like vs What It Is Actually Like

Exams

Expectations:
High school exams are over! You are well and truly free. The world is your Messina! Never again will you be chained down by the bureaucratic shackles of the education system.

Reality:
It’s a lie. It’s all a lie. HSCs, final exams, whatever you had, – they just repackaged it and make you go through it all again every two or so months. Oh, was the final year of high school hard? Well that’s great and all, but now you have to do it again, and again, and again.

Friends

Expectations:
You’re going to stay in touch with EVERYONE from high school. All your friends will hold hands till the end of time, skipping into the sunset eating purple, cotton candy glees. Like the American Pie movies, and especially the desperate last one, you WILL stick it out till the middle aged, nostalgic end.

Reality:
You might stay in touch with a handful or so of high school friends, if that. The ones you do stay in touch with will be there for the most part, but everyone else… well… that’s a different story. Occasionally, the odd peep from the past will inbox you, or throw you a text, or maybe you’ll bump into them at a party. Either way, what happens is pretty much the same: you’ll catch each other up on the highlights of the past six months, reminisce about the good ol’ days, have a generally fun time, and then lose contact with them until this happens again in a few months. Rinse and repeat.

Spare Time

Expectations:
You’re an adult now. You don’t have regular school to go to. You can swan in and out of campus, use your spare time how you choose, and answer to nobody and nothing. Live the life of those sit-com people on TV, and conveniently get up to shenanigan after shenanigan with seemingly zero financial pressure.

Reality:
You’re an adult now. And adult privileges means adult responsibilities. You don’t have regular school to go to, but you also won’t have a regular job after if you don’t show up enough. Swan in and out of campus at your own risk. Life isn’t a sit-com. You need money for shenanigans. So really, you’ll be divvying up your spare time between work at a job that slowly chips at your soul one ungrateful customer at a time and study that enters one ear, and exits the other.

Going Out

Expectations:
Hell to the yes. All night, every night. You are going to party like it’s 1999. No, not when you were born you silly millennial. Like the grown-ups did that thought the world was going to end as soon as 2000 rolled around. I know, but it was a pre-2012 world, and we’re now the wiser having been through seven false alarms. Mayan calendars be damned. But I digress. You are going to go hard, slam those shots, and turn your young, robust liver into foie gras.
Reality:
Lock-out laws. Need I say more?
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OK, I totally will. Opting out of a raw deal that includes seeing how quickly you can pour your hard earned money down your throat before 1:30AM, and then revealing your darkest personal thoughts about inadequacy and failure to an Uber driver that just hopes you don’t chunder in his Honda Civic, you turn to old faithful: House parties. Fun, right? Maybe. There will be times when you’re sitting at the front porch of a seedy dude named Lester, a friend of a friend because your social circles have been exhausted on the free house front. You stare at your Corona, praying to God that Lester doesn’t try to make a move on you, as the entire party of eight sits around the circle, one guy rattling off conspiracy theories.

Learning

Expectation:
Knowledge will be endowed up thee like dressing upon a salad, rain on the fields, or ever life upon an egg. This is where you will be consumed in a cocoon of learning, and emerge years later a worldly, intelligent butterfly, but not horrific or scary-like.

Reality:
You know how Ikea has that DIY option, and the instruction manual is this indecipherable booklet of diagrams with the occasional sprinkling of Swedish text? Yeah… it’s like that. Unlike high school, primary, or pre-K, the people in charge of teaching you really don’t care if you do the work, or pass, or whatever. It’s ultimately up to you to make the effort in learning. DIY learning if you will.

So yeah, good luck with that. Live up high school, your gap year and your holidays while you can, you’ll never be as free again.

About Year13

Year13 is an online resource for post school options that specialises in providing information and services on Apprenticeships, Gap Year Programs, Job Vacancies, Studying, Money Advice, Internships and the fun of life after school. Partnering with leading companies across Australia Year13 helps facilitate positive choices for young Australians when finishing school.